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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25589728">Spoilt for Choice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0Anapher0o/pseuds/o0Anapher0o'>o0Anapher0o</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Replicators, Slice of Life, the realities of futuristic technology</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:55:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25589728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0Anapher0o/pseuds/o0Anapher0o</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If you can order any food you can imagine from a replicator, how do you make a choice?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Spoilt for Choice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This isn’t really a story (it severely lacks anything that could be called a plot) as much as the result of me wondering if the writers of Star Trek ever consider the very human realities of the amazing tech they come up with.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The output slot of the replicator was gaping at him.<br/>
Julian was tired and hungry. It had been a long and very exhausting day in the infirmary. There was a virus going around the station that brought heaps of people by, on top of the ambushed ships coming back from the front lines. He had barely had five minutes to sit down all day, including lunch, which had consisted of a sandwich on the run. Therefore it was fair to say that he was famished. Exhausted as he was he didn’t even care much about what he should eat, as long as there was plenty of it.<br/>
Which was where his current problem began: He stood in front of the replicator in his quarters without even the faintest idea what to order.<br/>
He knew intellectually that the machine was programmed with 87,567,9493,572 recipes from over 70 different worlds, (both numbers he had at one point looked up for no particular reason), but right now he couldn’t think of a single one of them.<br/>
A part of him played with the thought of simply getting two or three pieces of the Cardassian chocolate cake Garak had introduced him to two days ago, and maybe some Idanian spice pudding to go with it, but the doctor in him insisted he should at least  have the semblance of a well balanced meal. What exactly that was supposed to entail though it didn’t provide.<br/>
He huffed in frustration and kept glaring at the replicator in the vain hope of a flash of inspiration. Too many choices, that was it. So he needed to narrow it down.<br/>
“Computer display a random selection of six dishes from the replicator menu.” he ordered. If he looked at a smaller selection maybe he could find something he felt partial to. Choosing one from six was significantly easier, especially if he didn’t have to come up with them himself. He could just decide which he didn’t want. The method of elimination usually worked for medical research, so why not for other things as well.  And even if there was nothing among the first six dishes he could repeat the experiment 145,946,582,262 times without a single dish coming up twice.<br/>
Two of the suggest options were out immediately: One was a beetroot salad and the other an exotic cocktail from Risa. After a moment’s thought he also eliminated the Trill dish, reminiscent of Sushi. He really wasn’t in the mood for raw fish. That left some Betazoid-Andorian fusion casserole, a Vulcan stew and an odd Saurian roast. He considered for a minute and then went with the Vulcan dish. He was too tired and not in the mood for experiments tonight.<br/>
The stew was light but nutritious and the taste was a comfortably familiar one.<br/>
He resolved to choose his meals like this more often.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It could have been any character, but it seemed like such a Julian type of thing. </p><p>I know it’s usually the UT that gets all the fic love (and rightfully so, it’s a baffling peace of plot magic), but once I started thinking about it I started having so many questions about the replicators, too. Like, how do you keep people from inadvertently poisoning themselves all the time? All it takes is accidentally ordering the wrong kind of tomato soup that has that one ingredient that’s toxic for your species. Is there a program that allows children to order their own dinner, but not make it a ton of ice cream? Is there one for people like Garak or Troi (and me) that prevents them from stuffing their face with chocolate all the time? How is it even possible to burn food in a Replicator?<br/>Gosh, I need a life…</p></blockquote></div></div>
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